Dr. Anna Horakova joined us last semester as Assistant Professor in the German Studies section. Here is what she shared with us about her background and work: “I grew up in Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic, and have lived and studied in several countries, including in the U.K., U.S., Germany, and France. While conducting research for a Masters in Medieval and Modern Languages at Oxford, I came across an archive of unofficial print culture of dissident movements from former East Germany that was held by the Taylor Institution Library. These publications were largely hand-made and included activist pamphlets and all kinds of artistic experiments. I have been interested in this corpus of work, which happens to be dispersed around various archives in Europe and the U.S., ever since. My Ph.D., which I completed at Cornell, examined how dissident cultures from the former Eastern Bloc engage with multiple media, transnationalism, and innovative aesthetic traditions from the interwar and postwar periods. My more recent work, such as an article I have published in the UC Berkeley migration studies journal TRANSIT, focuses on refugees in Germany through the prism of German socialist and colonial pasts.

For the past few years, I have also been studying the archives at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, working on a project titled “On the Eve of Revolution: The East German Artist in the 1980s,” which so far has entailed symposia, a co-authored article forthcoming in the Getty Research Journal, and a planned exhibition series. A real highlight of my first semester at UConn, besides meeting so many wonderful students in the classes I have taught, was to start a new project on a topic that combines the disciplines of East German Studies and Media Studies with my colleague, Professor Finger.

Before coming to UConn, I have taught at several universities and colleges, including Harvard, Emory, William & Mary, Lafayette College, and the University of Grenoble, France. At UConn, I look forward to teaching courses on modern and contemporary German-speaking literatures and cultures, with specific foci on the social roles of literature in modern and contemporary Germany, cultures of the Cold War, and the German-speaking literature of migration. I am also really excited about the Eurotech program and just received a grant for designing a new class on the intersection of literature and technology!”

Prof. Horakova’s specific areas of interest include:

• Post-1945 German literature and culture
• German-speaking literature of migration
• Decolonial German Studies 
• Cultures of dissidence in the GDR
• Literature and culture of the Weimar Republic
• Theories of the avantgarde
• Film and Visual studies

Herzlich willkommen!